Warning: This article contains discussion of trans issues which some readers may find distressing.
An expert has spoken about how the Netflix Ed Gein show could actually ‘endanger lives’ due to a bizarre storyline.
Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story has been wildly controversial since its release, with many hitting out at the true crime show for its skewing of the facts of the serial killer’s case.
Despite this, and an incredibly poor critical reception, the show has soared to over 90,000,000 hours watched in just the first three days of its release, and is sure to rise to number one on the Netflix charts in the next couple of days.
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One expert, however, has spoken out about how the TV show’s ‘gynophile’ storyline is incredibly dangerous to the LGBTQ+ community and may even endanger lives according to them.
Ed Gein was a serial killer from the 1950s who killed at least two people and robbed graves to make clothes and furniture out of skin.
Stories also came out after his arrest suggesting he cross-dressed and made a ‘woman-suit’ out of skin, something which later inspired The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Silence of the Lambs.
In the show Gein is shown wearing his mother’s clothes whilst masturbating in the very first five minutes and later is shown to cross-dress.
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In a bizarre moment, however, Gein meets transgender woman and trans rights activist Christine Jorgensen, who he never met in real life.
In this he suggests to her he may be like her, only for Jorgensen to say that he isn’t - he’s a gynephile.
She says in the show: “You're what they call a gynophiliac, you so eroticize the female body that you wish to put it on, to be inside of it. That's not an identity, that's sexualization.”
This storyline has been slammed by a transgender writer and cultural critic, Mey Rude, who wrote about this in a new column for Out Magazine.
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Rude spoke about the bizarre storyline, suggesting that it may have been show creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan confusing the term for autogynophile, someone who is aroused by the idea of cross-dressing and cross-gender.
A ‘gynophile’ is instead simply someone aroused by women or femininity.
Brennan admitted in an interview that they had added the scene, despite not being true, so that the story of Ed Gein wasn’t suggesting he was transgender, even though there was no proof he was a gynephile.
Rude went on to say that Hunnam plays Gein ‘with a lilting voice and feminine affectations… the show goes even further in conflating deviance with queerness in proposing that Gein was an autogynephile.’ She added: “By doing this, Brennan and the show are not only repeating and amplifying TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) talking points. They are potentially putting real-life trans women in danger.”
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She went on to point to the fact that ‘autogynephile’ is often a term used by transphobic politicians to accuse transgender people of being ‘groomers and pedophiles’, as well as being a commonly used term in conversion therapy. Autogynephile is also a term often used to discredit transgender people as mentally ill, disgustingly suggesting that their desire to change gender is due to their sexual attractions and not their gender.
This, according to Rude, is something that the Monster storyline backs up and could endanger the lives of transgender people.
Speaking on Reddit about the article, one viewer of the show hit out at Ian Brennan for suggesting that they needed to ‘make a distinction’ between Ed Gein wearing women’s skin and being transgender. They said: “No. No it wasn't important. It wasn't cool, either. Nobody except a transphobe sees a serial killer who wears his victim's skin and is confused about whether or not that person is a trans woman.”
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact TRUK Listens 0800 009 6640 daily from 8am-Midnight or email [email protected].
Topics: Netflix, Ed Gein, True Crime, TV and Film, TV, LGBTQ
Michael Slavin